Dr Seuss.
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| Alby in the maze |
I am loving this Christmas.
Celebrations started early this year with a trip to the Longleat Festival of Lights with my boys. Cue country drive, Trouble Monkey conquering his first real maze (taking the lead from the start the boy did good considering we were warned the average time to get around is 45mins), seeing cold animals and then walking past the most incredible, magical Chinese lanterns I've ever seen. It was breathtaking. This was followed by an outdoor light display and short film, projected against the walls of the house complete with musical Christmas tree and laser light display. Yes, Little Man got tired, cold and restless at the end but being the good parents we are we stuck him in the house pushchair, told him to be patient and then ignored him. A little bit.
After a cosy night in a pretty little cottage we set off on a very muddy walk where Albs baffled us with his eye spy genius (sh for shadows and st for stinging nettles leaving us particularly baffled and putting Daddy's P for Percy and b for bulldog to shame). Once we'd slipped and skidded in the mud and spotted the olde man made hill we hugged a few ancient randomly placed stones and headed off for some pub grub. It was brilliant. Yes, Monkey's hunger and general tiredness meant we had a few grumbly moments which required the normal child - parent negotiations, but they were short lived and in fact magically disappeared the minute the packet of chips and glass of water (with straw) got placed in front of him.
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| Oohhh look what the ancients made! |
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| Muddy country walk |
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| The traditional Thomas and Santa! |
Next of the Christmas fun came one freezing Thursday night when. Father Christmas, riding on the back of Thomas the tank engine no less, did the rounds of our neighbourhood. I cannot explain how much a double win this is to my two boys, Goblin still saying "bye bye toot toot" an hour after he'd gone. The event was organised by the local rotary club and Albs was delighted at getting a chocolate after dropping his coins in their collection bucket.the fun was repeated the following night when he came straight past our house. The boys ran out in their fleece onesie pyjamas to wave and claim a second chocolate.
This was followed by the children's Christmas party held in one of the Mess' on Sunday afternoon. Whilst a full afternoon of fun had been laid on with kids supper, children's entertainer and Santa grotto. Monkry was so tired he only just made it to get his gift from Father Christmas before heading home for a rest. Smalley didn't even manage that. He fell asleep in the back carrier five minutes after we arrived and didn't wake up until it was time to clear at the end.
Our next day of Christmas fun kicked off last Saturday when we headed into Reading for our first family panto. It was amazing. So amazing I was still living the laughter days in and even now I can't stop smiling at the memory. Star of the show was Justin Fletcher, a superstar of CBeebies and a favourite of Smalley. In fact I wouldn't have dared take our littlest one to a panto if Mr Tumble hadn't been there as I suspect he would have squirmed like crazy. As it was he was transfixed for almost the whole show (helped also by his flashing wand - compulsory panto merchandise). The panto was of Smow a white and the Seven Dwarves, but like all good pantos it was the Dame, Dolly Mixture and her son, jingles the juggling jester who stole the show, in large part due to the fantastic rapport they had on stage especially at the times they went off script (caused by too much silliness). They were professionally unprofessional and it had me in hysterics. (One up side of sleep deprivation is that it keeps hysteria close to the surface).
School has also kept us feeling festive with Trouble Monkeys school play oopsie Daisy angel, where he did very well with his one line, "all of the other angels did very special jobs". There was also much singer and despite looking as though he'd like to fall asleep in his seat Albs belted out all the songs ensuring we heard him from across the hall. More school silliness came on the Friday afternoon with the chaos of the Christmas fair. Cue lots of simple games, children filled up on chocolate, cake and soft drinks and Local stall holders hoping to entice last minute shoppers with their posh, pricey goods.
Finally, today we headed out to Blenheim palace for a family outing. After a little wander in the gardens we took the miniature train over to the yew tree maze and adventure playground. If I hadn't explained properly in the Longleat section, Albug loves mazes having discovered them in his magazines last year. Since then he has made his way though a number of osbourne maze books. His delight at real mazes is something that just has to be witnessed. We were informed very quickly that he was the leader and we had to line up behind him, no overtaking. It quickly turned out that Mark and I weren't taking his leadership seriously enough and so were informed that he now went by the name of 'captain sir' and we had to seek his permission before speaking. We aren't idiots and so we obeyed. It was a great maze. And a great miniature train ride complete with trip through a fairy light adorned tunnel with Father Christmas statues! What more could a little/big person need? We had lunch in the cafe, soup for the big people, sandwich and Christmas cookie for Albug, bread roll in ketchup for Goblin, before heading back (via the train) to the car. (Yes, you read that right. The boy has a rotten cold combined with never ending teething and has gone almost completely off food. His diet for the past few days being cookies, popcorn, fruit and ice pops. Bread today was regarded by us as a cause for celebration even if it was covered in ketchup!) One Christmas TV session later shortly followed by the traditional setting up of carrots (5 from us), mince pie and whisky for Father Christmas and co and the boys are asleep. Truth be told I'm just a little bit excited for tomorrow...!
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